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Monday, July 10, 2017

They All "Don't Drink The Water"

Woody Allen's first play, Don't Drink The Water, starred the great Lou Jacobi and

co-starred I Love Lucy's Vivian Vance as his wife. Vance was fired from the play by Allen as it previewed out of town and replaced by Kay Medford and later Peggy Cass. The show opened on Broadway in 1966.

Don't Drink The Water would be revived often after it's successful Broadway run with various revolving touring company casts over the next decade. Jackie Gleason, (coming off Skidoo), and Estelle Parsons would star in the awful 1969 film version, directed by Howard Morris, which Woody Allen would disavow.

The play takes place inside an American embassy behind the iron curtain. Three tourists, an American caterer named Walter Hollander and his wife and daughter rush into the embassy just ahead of the police who suspect them of spying via their innocent picture-taking. The comedy hijinx ensues from there, including the son of the, (missing), ambassador falling in love with the caterer's daughter. Don't Drink The Water received overall positive reviews and would run for 598 performances at three different Broadway theaters.

(thanks to John Wendler)

the original 1966 poster when the show was announced

Playbill while the show was debuting
out of town with Vivian Vance

Broadway Playbill (artist unknown to me)

Jacobi, Kay Medford and the entire cast, (Brother Theodore on the right)

4 comments:

Great stuff, but you left out Woody's 1994 made-for-TV film version, with Woody and Julie Kavner in the leads, and Michael J. Fox, Mayim Bialik, Dom DeLuise, and Edward Herrmann in the supporting cast. It's better than the 1969 version, but it's still not that great -- the material hasn't worn well with time.

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Drew Friedman, founder. circa 1947

About Drew Friedman (not the Drew Friedman who sells designer rugs in Nantucket):

Drew Friedman is an award winning illustrator/cartoonist/figure skater. His work has appeared in Raw, Weirdo, SPY, National Lampoon, Snarf, The New York Times, MAD, The New Yorker, BLAB!, The New York Observer, The Wall Street Journal, HONK!, Rolling Stone, Field & Stream, TIME, The Village Voice, etc. His comics and illustrations have been collected in 5 anthologies, the latest, "TOO SOON?" published by Fantagraphics in 2010. His collection of portraits "Drew Friedman's Sideshow Freaks" was published by Blast books in 2011. His third volume of portraits of old Jewish comedians "Even MORE Old Jewish Comedians" was published in 2011, featuring a foreword by Roastmaster General, Jeffrey Ross. Enough is enough.